Criteria for Determining and Evaluating Scientific Articles Subject Terms from Pragmatic Perspective

The research aim is identifying criteria for determining and evaluating scientific articles subject terms from pragmatic perspective. From pragmatic perspective, it seems the correctness of scientific articles subject terms depends on having functions including representationality and  usefulness, simultaneously. One of the criteria for evaluating the functions of articles subject terms is users’ language. To evaluate the functions of scientific articles subject terms by users’ language we need to identify common points among users’ language and relevant articles to their information needs. This research has done by decompositional analysis. These common points were identified according to user’s roles in information searching and using (user as searcher; user as citer; user as tagger). These common points are: a) All search terms that a certain article could response to them; b) Common terms between cited and citing articles that are available in the semantic sources of citing articles; c) Terms that are available in the semantic sources of article and used by citer in citation context; d) Tags dedicated to scientific articles by users through social tagging websites. This research concludes although each of user’s linguistic traces (user as searcher; user as citer; user as tagger) in the route of attaining articles relevant to her/his information need having possibility to be considered as a subject access points for those articles, but from the perspective of information use as information production faces challenges.